Unix Quotes - Page 3

• I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.

  Donald Knuth

  Expression, Definitions, Roof

  "Digital Typography". Book by Donald Knuth, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Views, People, Research

  15 Copy quote

• I changed the Linux copyright license to be the GPL some time in the first half of 1992. Mostly because I had hated the lack of a cheaply and easily available UNIX when I had looked for one a year before.

  Linus Torvalds

  Years, Firsts, Half

  Source: www.linuxfocus.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Different, Machines, Faces

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, p.9, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.

  Bill Joy

  Art, Mean, People

  "Creating One Huge Computer". Interview with Spencer Reiss, www.wired.com. July 15, 1998.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• So I would not be surprised if the globbing libraries, for example, will do NFD-mangling in order to glob "correctly", so even programs ported from real Unix might end up getting pathnames subtly changed into NFD as part of some hot library-on-library action with UTF hackery inside.

  Linus Torvalds

  Real, Order, Library

  "Re: git on MacOSX and files with decomposed utf-8 file names". www.spinics.net. January 23, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Real, Book, Careers

  Source: genius.cat-v.org

  14 Copy quote

  Show source